Daniel Stoupin, a PhD student at the University of Queensland in Australia, has created a stunning must-see video that will open your eyes to just how little most of us understand about the many different forms of life we have here on Earth. His “Slow Life” video combines thousands of close-up photographs of beautiful corals to illustrate their daily movements in a way that makes them seem not of this earth.
Stoupin’s video is an incredible combination of macro, aquatic and time-lapse photography methods the likes of which we’ve never seen before. And that’s because the corals in this video are displayed at speeds that most of us have never seen before. These organisms move too slowly for us to really notice what they do.
Not only are the corals and sponges in these videos governed by many of the same needs we are, they are also hugely important to their ocean environments.
“Our brains are wired to comprehend and follow fast and dynamic events better, especially those very few that happen at speeds comparable to ours,” Stoupin explains on his blog.
“As colorful, bizarre-looking, and environmentally important as we know corals and sponges are, their simple day-to-day life is hidden. Time lapse cinematography reveals a whole different world full of hypnotic motion and my idea was to make coral reef life more spectacular and thus closer to our awareness.”
If you’re interested in learning more about the organisms in Stoupin’s video and about marine ecosystems, be sure to visit his blog!